An indispensable collection from one of the masters of the medium that follows his progress through the new terrains and architectures that were created and enabled by recording technology, sound synthesis, analogue-electronic and then digital processing, but it also tracks the evolution of the sounds themselves, and of the aesthetic grammars and vocabularies these sounds refine and focus, and into the lives of which they are inextricably embedded. Here traced is a vital strand of the history of the uncovering and settlement of an imaginary continent, or of uninhabitable spaces, as Bayle called them. All the bases are covered - he studied with Messiaen, Schaeffer and Stockhausen, he joined ORTF under Schaeffer in the early ‘60s and by 1966 was running the Groupe de Recherches Musicales – until he founded his own studio in the late ‘70s. Which is also when he launched the now famous acousmonium (a very large array of wildly different loudspeakers designed for concert sound diffusion). Bayle is less dramatic than many of his contemporaries and he avoids narrative constructions. He is not a mixer of resources (live instruments or voices with tape) and was, from the beginning, closely engaged with spatialisation. His pieces work from a central idea which extends and grows, like a crystal in time; he seldom works episodically. And his ear is enviable. Variety rules as he explores one sonic idea - or one technological procedure - after another, following multiple paths. Think of each CD as a storage medium for unconnected works rather than something to put on and let run. I would recommend listening to one piece at a sitting. The 15 CDs, in a chromatic series of stiff card sleeves, come with a162 page booklet of essays, photos and track notes (in French and English) packed into a very sturdy 12.7 x 12.7 x 4.5 cm box.